Health Reform Bill to Allow Insurance Payments For Prayer Healings

Via Kevin Drum, I have learned that current Senate version of the health reform bill would provide for insurance payments for Christian Science prayer treatments--and probably other "spiritual" treatments as well.Reporting from Washington - Backed by some of the most powerful members of the Senate, a little-noticed provision in the healthcare overhaul bill would require insurers to consider covering Christian ...

Christian Right Diverse, Polite, and Thoughtful

While I'm a huge fan of Christopher Hitchens as a writer, let's face it, the man can be a jackass. And while I largely share his views on organized religion, I find his condescension rather mean-spirited. So when he penned a column for Slate articulating "What I've learned from debating religious people around the world," I was expecting the ...

Losing Our Religion

Dan Gilgoff passes on word of a new survey projecting that a quarter of Americans will be atheists or non-believers twenty years from now. If current trends continue, a quarter of Americans are likely to claim "no religion" in 20 years, according to a survey out today by Trinity College. Americans who identify with no religious tradition currently comprise 15 percent ...

Jimmy Carter Quits Baptists (Again)

Former President Jimmy Carter quit the Southern Baptist Convention more than eight years ago because of its refusal to ordain women as pastors (rather odd, since the policy had been in place since the early seventeenth century origins of the Baptist faith based on the example of another follow with the initials J.C.).   To make sure people noticed -- since ...

Rumsfeld Bible Quotes

Apparently, a lot of people who use Yahoo! are searching for "Rumsfeld bible quotes" today. This rather odd happenstance is apparently a function of a story that circulated earlier in the week about Rumsfeld putting bible verses on the cover sheets of "Worldwide Intelligence Updates" intended for President Bush.  Apparently, the story is largely untrue.

Better Vicar than Wicca?

I see via Andrew Sullivan that secularist Andrew Stuttaford argues that atheists should bring their children up in a relatively innocuous church lest they wind up choosing a more radical faith on their own: Belief in a deity (or deities), and the desire to worship it or them, is an almost universal aspect of human nature. This not something that can be ...

The Pope Picks Our Ambassadors Now?

I glossed over yesterday's news that the Vatican blocked Caroline Kennedy's appointment as U.S. ambassador for a variety of reasons.  Regular commenter Tlaloc emailed me, though, making a good point: [T]he Vatican refuses to accept any ambassador who is not explicitly pro-life including anti-ESC research (such as Doug Kmiec).  Various voices on the right have praised them for this principled stand. ...

Bow? Wow!

The conservative media and blogs have been having a field day parsing the bow that President Obama gave before Saudi King Abdullah in London last week. Some see it as a sign that he is submitting in fealty to Saudi Arabia. Others find 'coded messages' about how the US will submit to Islam. His act stirs up the canard that ...

Evangelical Collapse Damned Unlikely

Michael Spencer, a self-evowed evangelical Christian, predicts the end of his kind. We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West. Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted ...

Why Mormons Aren’t Christians

In a long essay, E.D. Kain defends his assertion that "Mormons are not, by any definition of the word, Christian."  A brief excerpt: Mormons are no more Christian than Rastafarians are, regardless of their Coptic heritage. Nor are members of the Baha’i faith Muslim, despite their roots in Islam, and despite the fact that many of them believe in Muhammad ...

Major Reforms in Saudi Arabia

Saudi King Abdullah announced a major shake-up in his government over the weekend. Among the changes was the naming of the first woman to a high government office, Deputy Minister for Girls' Education. The promotion of a woman in a country that generally treats women as second class citizens is indeed a big step. More interesting--and important--were changes he made in ...

God and Natural Disaster

Heather Mac Donald asks, Will Bill O’Reilly or anyone else who saw the hand of God in the safe landing of US Airways Flight 1549 this January please explain why God chose not to save Continental Connection Flight 3407, which plunged into a house outside of Buffalo last night, killing all 49 people on board and a resident on the ground? She ...

Catholic Church Revives Practice of Indulgences

The New York Times reports that the Catholic Church has begun reviving the practice of indulgences under Pope Benedict XVI.Like the Latin Mass and meatless Fridays, the indulgence was one of the traditions decoupled from mainstream Catholic practice in the 1960s by the Second Vatican Council, the gathering of bishops that set a new tone of simplicity and informality for ...

So, Has Rev. Warren Become Muslim?

I don't think I'm the only one who noticed that during his invocation, Rev. Rick Warren used the phrase, "You, the merciful one; You, the compassionate one'. That phrase, the heart of the bismillah, was not accidental, I believe. The bismillah is the prayer that is used to start nearly anything done by a pious Muslim, even appearing at the top ...

Can We Just Ban Them and Be Done With It?

I tell you these Nanny State types really are grating. Now it isn't just second hand smoke, but third hand smoke. What is third hand smoke? That smell from people that have just had a cigerette. That is apparently a super duper deadly toxic brew of chemicals that can KILL!!! Run!!!! Third-hand smoke is what one ...